


scrubs

by watergator



Series: di and phebes [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, F/F, Genderswap, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 03:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watergator/pseuds/watergator
Summary: surgical nurse phoebe lester is run off her feet and feeling out of her depth when she starts her new job. but it soon seems she may not be the only one feeling this way when she meets new surgeon, diana howell





	scrubs

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to megan for beta'ing <3

“Lester, we have a liver transplant op coming in soon, go make sure the scrubs are all in order would you?”

Phoebe’s barely had time to turn the dial on her locker where her coat and backpack are stuffed into, but she turns on the heels of her trainers to face the tall, bleached blonde guy that stands across the room where he’s just walked in; he’s already dressed up in his uniform and his hair is a little dishevelled.

Phoebe nods politely, “Of course, James.”

The man stops from where it looks like he’s about to turn and leave and scoffs with a grin.

“I told you,” he shakes his head. “Jimmy is fine. Don’t call me James, it makes me sound like a bloody banker or something.”

Phoebe does an awkward laughs and nods her head, watching where Jimmy turns and leaves and goes back to his business away from the little locker room.

She rests her head on the locker, feeling cool metal against her forehead. Only three weeks into her new job at the University College Hospital and she’s already feeling run into the ground; she barely has a moment to breathe and she feels like she has a billion responsibilities resting on her shoulders. She could laugh though, because disinfecting somebody's scrubs is far less of a task than the one wearing said scrubs, elbow deep in guts and blood pulling out some guys internal organs.

Phoebe pushes herself away from the locker, fearful that someone less kind than Jimmy will find her hiding away in the back room, and manages to use her legs and walk towards the door out where the hospital bustles with all kinds of staff and patients.

She finds where she’s been stationed on a little whiteboard that has her name,  _ Phoebe Lester, _ scribbled in green marker alongside the floor and ward that she’s working on this morning. She smiles at Jimmy’s handwriting, she’s not really supposed to have the floor name on her sheet, but in the short amount of time she’s known Jimmy, he clearly understands her ability to get lost quickly.

She checks the rest of the staff beside her name, seeing a couple other surgical nurses other than herself and a few actual surgeons. One name she doesn’t recognise, but she ignores it and double checks the floor and ward and makes her way towards the lift.

She passes people in the hallways, a couple of doctors, a few surgeons with their masks hanging down their neck, and although she’s been working here long enough, it still feels like she’s been dropped inside a movie set and she’s just wandering around professionals.

She’s been to hospital before of course, she knew what she’d be expecting, but this time it feels different, being on the other side of the spectrum; she was looking after people this time, not having people look after her.

She presses for the lift and waits slowly for it to begin to come to her level. In the distance she can hear the familiar telltales of a newborn cry come from the direction of the maternity ward, and she smiles a little to herself.

The lift dings and a large group of people pile out; a young mother with a double buggy, a dad with his teen son who’s supported by crutches and an elderly man pushing what Phoebe supposes is his wife, in a wheelchair, and for a moment, Phoebe prays they don’t stop and ask for directions – after having one too many awkward instances where someone had asked her how to get to the maternity unit and she’d mistakenly pointed them towards the ICU instead. Phoebe really had considered memorising the hospital floor plans each morning and night just to save herself from any more internal embarrassment.

But she gives them a polite smile and watches them go, and once it’s empty she steps in and waits for the doors to close.

And when they finally do, she hears a voice call out from the other side and the sound of feet running frantically towards her.

“Wait!” a voice calls and Phoebe stands dumbly in the lift, unsure of what to do.

She stands there for a moment until she suddenly realises to press the button for the doors to open but it’s too late and they’re slammed shut and just as the lift begins to move upwards she hears the sound of a muttered,

“Fucker!” on the other side.

Phoebe’s stomach flips inside of herself, but soon enough the doors ding open and she’s walking with help of the signs that hang from the ceilings, trying to imagine that the person she left on the floor below hopefully made it up.

She’s not on duty to prep the patient before surgery today, Phoebe is sure she saw a name under Bryony that was responsible for that today, so she makes her way to theatre and see’s the huddle of surgeons that are already stood around talking and probably discussing certain surgery stuff.

She’s walking past them with a squeeze, ready to go to the back of the room where her little station of medical tools and disinfection is, trained and well-versed on knowing how to make sure they’re completely sterile, but before that she’s grabbing her gown, mask and hat – tucking in the shoulder length, dyed black hair away neatly from the loose bun it’s pulled into, when she overhears a surgeon she’s not sure she’s met yet.

“Where the hell is Howell?”

He sounds rather irritated and frustrated, and Phoebe puts it down to the fact he’s probably under immense stress, having to transfer an organ from one body to the other can’t be a breeze – but just as Phoebe is snapping on her clean gloves, the door swings open and a dishevelled looking girl stands in the doorway with wide, brown eyes.

Phoebe looks at where she stands with her long, curly, brown hair messily pulled into a loose ponytail that hangs low, her long legs underneath her blue scrubs. The freckles that are scattered  across her nose that stand out in contrast to the red blush on her cheeks.

“Good of you to join us,” the same surgeon from earlier remarks and Phoebe watches the blush spread to her jaw in a pink glow.

The girl, Howell, says nothing and Phoebe instead puts her head down at gets to work on a scalpel.

“Best go get suited up now –“ the surgeon says, and as Phoebe looks up he sees the man nod towards her.

“Nurse,” he addresses Phoebe who puts the tools back on the table. “Suit Howell up will you?”

Phoebe nods as the surgeons seem to pool out of the room leaving Phoebe and the awkwardly standing supposedly-surgeon in the room.

Phoebe pulls her mask off, knowing she’ll have to re-disinfect once coming into contact with someone who hasn’t been sterilised yet, and smiles at her warmly from across the room.

“Need a hand with your scrubs?” Phoebe asks and the girl looks up at her with a frown.

“You’re the one who ditched me at the lift!” she exclaims.

Phoebe frowns, her stomach doing that flippy thing again.

“Oh,” Phoebe says quietly. “Sorry.”

Howell tuts and shakes her head, “Doesn’t matter, now that I’ve officially embarrassed myself in front of my colleagues. On my first day too.”

Phoebe smiles at that. “It’s your first day?” she asks, the girl nods, still looking bitter.

“Yeah,” she says with a tone of annoyance. “And it’s going absolutely shit.”

Phoebe shifts on her feet, “It’s alright, I’ve only been working here for three weeks and I’m still finding my feet.”

The girl doesn’t even attempt a smile and instead walks over to the basket of previous scrubs, she begins to rifle through them when Phoebe tries to speak,

“Oh, uh, those ones are-“

But the girl snaps her head up in her direction with a scowl. “I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing, I don’t need your help.”

Phoebe sighs; she’s had her fair dealings with working with assholes. A good few people here in the hospital unfortunately are a large fraction of them.

She goes to where the fresh, clean scrubs are kept and takes them to her, making her turn around with a tap of her shoulder.

“Here. Those are dirty ones you’re searching through, you’ll need fresh ones.”

The girl looks at the scrubs and then back up at her.

She takes them reluctantly. “Thanks,” she mutters, sounding a little embarrassed.

Phoebe smiles, feeling a tiny bit smug as she watches the girl get herself ready, adamant she doesn’t need help, even when she struggles a little with knowing what goes first – the gloves or mask, but Phoebe silently watches her as she sterilises the equipment and watches the girl attempt to tidy up her wild mess of curls.

“I’m Phoebe, by the way.” Phoebe says as the girl tries for a fifth time to pull her hair into a bun.

“And I’m having a fucking nightmare,” the other girl says, voice cracking a little.

It’s obvious that perhaps she’s nervous – Phoebe remembers her first surgery, and although she wasn’t the one in control, she still learnt that it doesn’t take one person to perform an operation – it takes a team, and Phoebe was a part of that team, no matter how little or large she felt.

The girl eventually manages to get her hair back to fit into her cap and turns to Phoebe with a flustered look.

“Does this look okay?” she asks. Phoebe laughs.

“I don’t think the patient will be able to give any comments on your appearance, but yeah – you look like you’re ready.”

She actually smiles at that.

“Cheers, Phoebe.”

“You’re welcome, Howell.”

She grimaces. “Don’t call me that. I’m Diana, by the way, I’m also sorry for earlier.”

Phoebe shakes her head, “It’s okay, you’re just nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” Diana tries to defend herself, but is let down by the wobble in her voice.

Phoebe puts down the forceps in gloved hands, “You are. You should be.”

Diana is about to say something when another surgeon comes through the door, ready to be suited up and ready.

“They’re bringing him in now.” He informs them both as he strides across the room. “Nurse, grab me my stuff please.”

Phoebe only smiles at Diana as she goes back to work.

*

The surgery goes great. Minimal bleeding, not a lot of risks, and some guy ends up with a brand new liver that’ll hopefully not kill him.

Phoebe had been there to clean the area for incision, but had mostly been stood at the back of the room, bringing and taking tools when instructed, watching the rest of the work happen around her. She’d mostly been watching Diana in fact; watching her stand close to another surgeon as she did little things such as incisions and cuts and clamps, and when it was all over she was the one patching him back up with a careful hand.

Phoebe was impressed, she barely even shook at the slightest amount of blood, bone, tissue or guts – there was only so much Phoebe could stand, simply telling herself it was just body jelly.

(Until she realised it was ruining real life food jelly for her, that was when it stopped.)

Bryony, the girl with bright pink hair and nails she gets in trouble for having too long, eventually takes the unconscious patient back where she’ll take care of him before and after he wakes up and let him go home when the time is right, and after a few surgeons congratulate each other, Phoebe realises it’s just her and Diana again in the room that smells like copious amounts of disinfection and the faint coppery smell of blood.

Phoebe is washing down her station, cleaning it over with slow careful strokes of her cloth when she hears a heavy sigh from behind her. Phoebe turns her head just a little to look over at where Diana stands, head against the wall much like Phoebe had done earlier this morning.

“You did good,” Phoebe tells her. Diana doesn’t move from her spot, nor does she say anything in return.   
  
She stays like that, even when Phoebe finishes what she’s doing and is throwing her mask and hat into the full tub beside her. She’s not sure if she should say something or awkwardly pat her on the back; she’s not certain where boundaries lie with this new colleague of hers. She does a weird in between thing where her hand brushes against the jut of her shoulder blade, making the girl look up for a moment.   
  
“You did good,” Phoebe tells her again, this time with a little more sincerity behind her voice.

Diana seems to appreciate that, and smiles, her eyes looking a little watery, under fluorescent lights.

“Thanks,” she says with a whisper. Phoebe smiles at her, her hand hesitating again until it lands softly on her back and she leaves her, walking out the theatre with a grin on her face.

*   
  
The rest of the day passes with the same chopped up routine; nothing truly is the same with working at a hospital, but really Phoebe finds herself doing the same jobs over and over again, just rehashed into a different pattern.   
  
She prepares patients for op, she tends to them afterwards, and she’s only in surgery another two more times that day - the rest of the time she’s on bed duty cleaning wounds and redressing them. An old man almost pukes on her and she’s asked five times by wandering patients for the nearest bathroom, to which she can’t remember and has to awkwardly get another member of staff to help her.   
  
Nonetheless, it’s a successful day; no deaths or anything too horrific to keep her awake tonight. So far she’s yet to see somebody die on the operating table, and she’s managed to skive out of any gruesome emergency surgeries, but Phoebe guesses that comes with her inexperience, and as time passes, she can visualise her name being bumped up on the board for A&E.   
  
But soon enough she’s checking out, ticking her final job off and heading to the staff room with tired feet and heavy bones inside her body. Many times has she seen an empty hospital bed and thought about perhaps collapsing onto it and getting in a good few hours of well needed sleep, but the rational brain has always managed to stop her. So far, at least.   
  
She reaches her locker where a few other people are filtering in and out. It’s gone past one in the morning and somebody stifles a yawn which sets someone else off which makes Phoebe yawn which makes somebody else yawn too.

She opens her locker, pulling out what she’d stuffed inside from earlier, feeling worlds away from this morning now after today had stretched on for so long, that when she feels a hand on her shoulder she almost jumps out of her skin.

“Sorry!” A voice comes from beside her and when Phoebe spins around to face the culprit who almost gave her a heart attack, she’s greeted with familiar warm, brown eyes and a small smile.   
  
“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” Phoebe breathes, placing a hand over her chest, ignoring the way Diana’s hand slips away from her shoulder ever so subtly.   
  
“Sorry,” Diana repeats, “although, if I had given you a heart attack I’d be the best person to save you,” she says with a grin and a wink.   
  
It shocks Phoebe for a moment, she opens her mouth to say something but the other girl beats her to it.   
  
“I just wanted to thank you for earlier. I was sure I was gonna lose my head today,” she says with a breathy laugh. “Nearly did, actually. So, thanks.”   
  
Phoebe looks at her and shakes her head. “It’s fine. You already thanked me. First days are tough, even tougher when they’re spent taking a man’s liver out of his body,” she tries to joke, and Diana actually laughs.   
  
“You’re right. Which was why I was gonna ask you, like, do you wanna grab a drink or something?” Her words trail off at the end, and Phoebe blinks at her.   
  
“It’s just that I’d much like to celebrate not killing anybody on my first day, and you’re like, the only person I can celebrate with,” she adds on, words rushed from her mouth and Phoebe smiles warmly at her.   
  
“I’m the only person you can celebrate with?” she asks with a quirk of her brow, watching the way Diana’s cheeks blush just slightly.   
  
“Well, the only person I  _ want _ to celebrate with. The other surgeons are kind of giant cocks.”   
  
Phoebe splutters a laugh at her boldness, and Diana laughs with her.   
  
“So, like, you don’t have to say yes or anything -”   
  
“Yes, I’ll come,” Phoebe interrupts her from what sounds like an incoming ramble. “First day drinks sound good. At least you’re not doing it with Jimmy, he got me so sick after my first shift,” Phoebe laughs, grimacing slightly at the memory of jelly vodka shots and an enthusiastic Jimmy dancing on a bar table.   
  
She grabs her things and shuts her locker.   
  
“Who’s Jimmy?” Diana asks, “Your boyfriend?” her voice pitches up with curiosity.

Phoebe shoves her arm into her coat with a snort. “Not likely, he just works here actually,” she tells her and Diana nods.

“But like, not a boyfriend or anything?”   
  
Phoebe pulls on her coat and looks at where Diana stands in her scrubs like herself is, chewing her bottom lip slightly.   
  
“No,” Phoebe shakes her head as she zips her front up. “I don’t think a gay man and a lesbian would exactly work out very well in the long run.”

Diana blinks, and for a second Phoebe wonders if it was the right thing to do to just drop a sexuality bomb on her, it’s not as if it’s any secret or something she doesn’t want people to know. There’s a reason why Phoebe always goes for the rainbow patterned cap when she can.   
  
But Diana’s face cracks into a smile. “Oh,” she says with a rush of air, “I suppose you’re right,” she smiles brightly and Phoebe feels her heart kick against her ribs at the sight of those two irresistible looking dimples on either side of her face. A pretty face, she should add.   
  
“Right,” Phoebe says after a beat of silence. “Drinks. Know any good bars that’ll be okay with us walking in with our scrubs on?”   
  
Diana’s face falters a little before looking down at herself then back at Phoebe. “Oh. Fuck, I didn’t even think about that - I bet I look like I’m on my deathbed right now,” she laughs nervously as she runs a hand through the fallen curls that frame her face.   
  
“Well,” Phoebe says, “if you were on your deathbed, then I’d be the best one to take care of you,” she attempts a wink, trying to ping pong earlier banter, and Diana looks confused for a split second before she’s cracking up laughing.   
  
Phoebe doesn’t think she’s even met anyone that’s considered her this funny before.   
  
“Oh my god,” Diana says with a wide grin. “You’re so annoying.”   
  
Phoebe shrugs her shoulders with a smile. “Thanks. You wanna head out?”   
  
Diana looks down at herself again, and huffs a laugh once she look back at Phoebe.   
  
“Suppose I should start as I mean to go on - a mess, that is,” she shrugs. “C’mon, I only have a night shift tomorrow and so do you, and I wanna get drunk,” Diana tells her as she makes her way to the door. Everyone else has already left.   
  
Phoebe cocks her head as she follows her out, “How do you know I have a night shift tomorrow?”   
  
Diana turns her head to look back at her as she pushes the door open, curls falling gracefully across her shoulder.    
  
“I checked your sheet, now let’s go, Lester, I wanna hear you pour your heart out to me, five glasses of wine in.”   
  
Phoebe snorts a laugh. “We’ll have to see,” she says.   
  
Diana stops, letting Phoebe walk beside her now that they stroll down the busy halls.   
  
“It’s alright, we’re both qualified to save the other if it goes tits up,” she winks. Phoebe feels a blush under her skin.

“Thank god for that,” Phoebe says quietly and when Diana turns her head to smile at her.

Phoebe finds herself smiling twice as wide back.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr !! @watergator


End file.
